The Treblinka Holocaust - vho.org

30 Pages·2003·0.57 MB·English

The Treblinka Holocaust
ARNULFNEUMAIER1
“Achieving our quest of a ‘new world order’
depends on our learning the Holocaust’s lessons.”
Ian J. Kagedan2
1. The Demjanjuk Trial and Treblinka
1.1. Background of the Demjanjuk Trial
In the days of the Soviet Union, the American immigrants from Ukraine were split into two fac-
tions, one of which was favorably disposed towards Moscow. At that time, this group published a
weekly paper titled News from Ukraine. Michael Hanusiak, one of the participants in this publishing
venture, made no bones about his close ties to Soviet authorities in Moscow. H. P. Rullmann be-
lieves that one of the foremost tasks of this group was the defamation of the anti-Communist, na-
tionalist Ukrainians in exile, whom they charged with collaboration with the ‘German Fascists’ dur-
ing the Second World War.3 This approach had already been practiced in other cases, which not
only resulted in the creation of internal strife amongst these Ukrainians-in-exile but also detracted
from their collective public reputation.4 This Soviet method of combating opponents by means of
disinformation and falsified or completely fabricated evidence is well-known. In the mid-1980s
even the Federal Department of the Interior issued a warning regarding this practice.5 It is all the
more astonishing that the American authorities were taken in by the Communist Ukrainians-in-exile
in the case of Demjanjuk in the mid-1970s.
In 1975, after allegedly in-depth research in Soviet archives, Michael Hanusiak submitted to the
US Department of Immigration and Naturalization in New York, a list with 70 names of presumed
National Socialist collaborators of Ukrainian origin; this list also included the name of John Dem-
janjuk, who until 1981 was an American citizen living in Cleveland, Ohio, where he worked as auto
mechanic. In the case of Demjanjuk, Hanusiak came up with an incriminating statement by one H.
Daniltschenko, according to whom Demjanjuk had served in the concentration camps Sobibor and
Flossenbürg.6 This, along with a picture of an ID card allegedly documenting Demjanjuk’s em-
ployment in these two camps, prompted the American Immigration and Naturalization Office to
take up the case of John Demjanjuk.7 The role which pro-Communist Hanusiak played in building
Demjanjuk up to be Ivan the Terrible can hardly be misinterpreted. The true instigators of what was
1 Arnulf Neumaier died in 2000. Three years after his death, Carlo Mattogno and Jürgen Graf published a thorough
study of the Treblinka camp with numerous documents which were unknown to Neumaier: Treblinka. Vernichtungs-
lager oder Durchgangslager?, Castle Hill Publisher, Hastings 2002 (online: vho.org/D/Treblinka). This book will
soon appear in English at Theses & Dissertations Press. Some of the more important new findings of Mattogno and
Graf were included in this revised edition of Neumaier’s contribution.
2 Director of government relations for B’nai B’rith Canada, “Memory of Holocaust central to new world order”,To-
ronto Star, Nov. 26, 1991, p. A17.
3 H. P. Rullmann, Der Fall Demjanjuk, Verlag für ganzheitliche Forschung und Kultur, Struckum 1987, p. 76.
4 Cf. the cases of K. Linnas, F. Wallus and Feodor Fedorenko: H. P. Rullmann, op. cit. (note 3), pp. 87, 96ff., 164; U.
Walendy,Historische Tatsachen (HT) no. 25, Verlag für Volkstum und Zeitgeschichtsforschung, Vlotho 1985, p. 35
(Wallus); U. Walendy, HT 34, ibid., 1988, p. 14 (Linnas).
5 Memo of the Federal Minister of the Interior, Innere Sicherheit no. 1, Bonn, March 20, 1985.
6 H. P. Rullmann, op. cit. (note 3), p. 77f., from News from Ukraine.
7 Cf. memo from H. E. Wagner, Deputy Director of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, New York, Jan. 29,
1976.
471
GERMARRUDOLF (ED.) · DISSECTING THE HOLOCAUST
in effect a new Eichmann Trial are not difficult to discern behind the scenes. After the News from
Ukraine urged the American authorities in 1976 to take steps against Demjanjuk, the American De-
partment of Justice requested that Demjanjuk be stripped of his citizenship due to false claims made
in his immigration papers. Meanwhile, witnesses were found in Israel who identified John Demjan-
juk on photographs as being Ivan the Terrible of Treblinka. Investigations regarding Sobibor as well
as Treblinka followed. In 1979 the case was officially taken up by the OSI (Office of Special Inves-
tigations), the American ‘Nazi-hunting’ office set up under President Carter.
However, the Trawniki ID card No. 1393, issued to the name Demjanjuk, which had been re-
printed in the News from Ukraine and later became the only piece of documentary evidence used in
the trial, exists in two variations: the second card numbered 1393 and bearing the name Demjanjuk
belongs to the papers of the concentration camp Flossenbürg, which are held in the Federal Ar-
chives in Koblenz. Similar names are very common in the Ukraine. But timewise the number does
not correspond to Demjanjuk’s stay in Trawniki. – Furthermore, ID numbers were only used once.
The ‘original ID card’ was not available for the pre-trial investigations in Jerusalem. This central
piece of evidence was clearly not officially available from the Soviet Union, for which reason Ar-
mand Hammer, the American billionaire of Jewish extraction, was called in. Hammer had already
enjoyed an extremely good business relationship with Soviet circles in Lenin’s time.8 In any case
the Trawniki ID card did not get to Jerusalem through official channels, but personally via Armand
Hammer. If the ID card were officially released, appropriate papers would have been present both in
Moscow and in Israel.
Dieter Lehner, the expert from the Demjanjuk defense team, has exposed the ID card as a total
fabrication,9 a discovery matching those of the German Federal Criminal Police Office. Even
though the Israeli authorities were already apprised of this fact by the Federal Criminal Police as
early as 1987, the Court suppressed this information. Chief Prosecutor Michael Shadek commented
merely:
“As far as I am concerned Demjanjuk did commit murders – whether in Treblinka, in Sobibor or else-
where, that’s secondary.”
And in response to the objection that the Federal Criminal Police Office had proven the SS ID
card to be fake:
“We are relying on our own expert reports and consider them no less convincing than before.”10
But German authorities also played a strange game where the forged Trawniki ID card was con-
cerned. For example, the Münchner Merkur reported that the Federal Chancellery itself saw to it
that the Demjanjuk defense team did not learn of the German expert reports by Lehner and the
German Federal Criminal Police Office [Bundeskriminalamt, BKA], and that the latter was ordered
from higher-up to keep silent about its findings. And what is more: the expert witness from the
BKA who did ultimately take the stand in the Jerusalem Court after all, had been instructed by the
German authorities to draw up a partial report for this trial, dealing exclusively with certain simi-
larities between the retouched ID card photo and John Demjanjuk’s real-life features. In this way
the impression was evoked in the Jerusalem Trial that the ID card was genuine. The partial report
was submitted by BKA expert Dr. Altmann. In a memo he drew up at that time, BKA Department
Chief Dr. Werner described these actions of the German authorities thus:
“Clearly, factual doubts had to be subordinate to the political considerations.”11
8 Cf. A. Hammer’s correspondence, in H. P. Rullmann, op. cit. (note 3), p. 87ff.
9 D. Lehner, Du sollst nicht falsch Zeugnis geben, Vowinckel, Berg am See n.d. [1988]; cf. H. P. Rullmann, op. cit.
(note 3), p. 103ff.
10 stern, March 5, 1992, pp. 198ff.
11 For details cf. A. Melzer, “Iwan der Schreckliche oder John Demjanjuk, Justizirrtum? Justizskandal!”,SemitTimes,
spec. ed., Dreieich, March 1992, esp. pp. 3, 13; also Münchner Merkur, March 26, 1992. I am grateful to D. Lehner
for further information, cf. op. cit. (note 9).
472
ARNULFNEUMAIER · THETREBLINKAHOLOCAUST
It has turned out that the photograph on the ID card is an old photo of Demjanjuk from 1947
which was taken from his American immigration file(!) and retouched for the ID card.
When the first doubts were raised about the authenticity of the heretofore unknown ID card, the
Jerusalem Court suddenly had several other specimens of identical make on hand; the origin of
these cards, which were also fabrications, has not been determined.9
The supposition that the KGB might have officially fabricated the ID card is largely refuted by the
poor quality of the fabrication and by the ignorance, shown by the card, of the administrative struc-
ture of that branch of the police that was responsible for issuing this kind of ID card, as expert
Lehner was able to demonstrate convincingly.9 This does not, however, rule out that a certain circle
within the KGB contributed to the fabrication of the card, a circle which must also have had con-
nections to the American immigration authorities, where the photo originated. These circles are in
all probability identical to those who worked from the start to set Demjanjuk up as Ivan the Terrible
in order to revitalize the Holocaust Religion.
The proceedings to expatriate Demjanjuk began in 1981 before the Cleveland District Court.
Naturally, five survivors of Treblinka recognized Demjanjuk as Ivan the Terrible, and the Court’s
copies of the Trawniki ID card No. 1393 became the chief piece of evidence on whose basis judge
Battisti stripped Demjanjuk of his American citizenship.12
On the request of Israel, deportation proceedings began in 1984, and the deportation itself fol-
lowed in February 1986, in violation of all traditions of international law, as the alleged site of the
crime (Treblinka) was located in Poland, and at a time when the state of Israel did not yet even ex-
ist. How very important this Trawniki ID card was to the OSI in this trial is demonstrated by the
fact that the OSI, together with Israeli authorities, attempted to persuade a number of witnesses to
confirm the authenticity of this fabricated card against their better knowledge.13
1.2. The Demjanjuk Trial in Jerusalem
With the start of the Demjanjuk Trial in Jerusalem on February 16, 1987, the Treblinka Holocaust
was restored to the active memory of the world public. According to the testimony of Jewish wit-
nesses, Treblinka had been a World War Two extermination camp where vast numbers of Jews
were killed – between 700,000 and 3 million, depending on the source consulted.14 The Jerusalem
Court decided arbitrarily to set the number of victims at 875,000.15
The intended linchpin in this revival of the Treblinka Holocaust was the Ukrainian John Demjan-
juk. This man was declared to be “Ivan the Terrible” of Treblinka where he was said to have com-
mitted every means of killing, cruelties and perversions imaginable. Not enough that he allegedly
drove the Jews into the gas chambers personally, armed with iron canes and a sword, and cut off
women’s breasts with the bayonet – no, he also operated the Diesel engines whose exhaust gas was
piped into the gas chambers, there to kill the Jews. The fact that these claims contradicted the sole
alleged documentary proof, which indicated that Demjanjuk had been employed in the camps Sobi-
bor and Flossenbürg (and only in those camps) – this fact was generously overlooked.
The chief witness for the prosecution in the Jerusalem Trial, Eliahu Rosenberg, had stated in Vi-
enna on December 24, 1947, in a “fact report” whose twelve pages he had each initialed personally,
that the Ukrainian Ivan had been clubbed to death in his sleep.16 When Demjanjuk’s defense attor-
ney Dov Eitan pointed out to Rosenberg during the Jerusalem Trial that John Demjanjuk, present
12 Personal info. D. Lehner, July 26, 1993.
13 H. P. Rullmann, op. cit. (note 3), pp. 118ff., 174ff.
14 700,000 is the figure cited, for ex., by the Institut für Zeitgeschichte; cf. the chapter by G. Rudolf, this volume; the
highest figure is given in World Jewish Congress et.al. (eds.), The Black Book – The Nazi Crime against the Jewish
People, New York 1946, reprint: Nexus Press, New York 1981, pp. 400ff.
15 Jerusalem District Court, Criminal Case 373/86.
16 E. Rosenberg, Tatsachenbericht, Jewish Historical Documentation, Dec. 24, 1947; pub. in H. P. Rullmann, op. cit.
(note 3), pp. 133ff.
473
GERMARRUDOLF (ED.) · DISSECTING THE HOLOCAUST
there in the courtroom, could not be Ivan the Terrible, since according to his – Rosenberg’s – own
testimony Ivan was already dead since 1943, Rosenberg said that this had been a misunderstanding
on the part of the secretary recording his report at the time, and that he had had only third-hand
knowledge of the death of Ivan the Terrible. The secretary in question, T. Friedman, refused to tes-
tify on this issue, since Jewish sources had threatened him with death in the event that he were to
confirm that Rosenberg had really reported the death of Ivan the Terrible as his own personal ex-
perience at the time in question.17 Clearly, therefore, Rosenberg had really affirmed Ivan’s death
under oath.
So had Ivan the Terrible been resurrected?
It is characteristic of the psyche and the mental state of this kind of witness to substantiate alleged
mistakes with the wish for a specific reality; the truth is subordinated to intentions and wishes. Re-
garding the motives prompting the state of Israel to hold this trial, Jewish publisher A. Melzer wrote
that in the mid-1980s the collective Israeli awareness of the Holocaust was on the wane. It had be-
come little more than one chapter among many. Further, the view taken of the Jews by the world
public at that time was becoming increasingly shaped by the actions of the Israelis towards the Pal-
estinians, which began to be likened to those of Himmler’s SS. This was probably the reason why
the proceedings in the Jerusalem District Court dealt less with the case of John Demjanjuk than, es-
sentially, with the total destruction of the Jews in Europe. The ‘Auschwitz Cudgel’ was in need of
exercising.18
Ever since the mid-1970s, Ivan the Terrible, personified by John Demjanjuk, was systematically
built up to be a symbol of the Treblinka Holocaust. The circumstance that the Monster of Treblinka
had to be a Ukrainian probably has historical roots in the time when the Cossacks liberated the
western part of the Ukraine from Jewish oppressors and tax-collectors.19 Oaths of vengeance and in-
stinctive hatred à la the Old Testament survive for centuries.
Two revealing circumstances may aid in the further assessment of the events and connections re-
lating to the Trawniki ID card.
One rather strange event took place in Jerusalem on November 29, 1988. On November 20, 1988,
Demjanjuk’s attorney, Dov Eitan, had received a comprehensive report from the subject expert for
the defense, a report which proved conclusively that the chief piece of evidence against Demjanjuk,
the Trawniki ID card, was a fabrication. For the December 4, 1988, appeal date Eitan had an-
nounced a surprise for the Jerusalem Court, but mysteriously fell out of a 15th story window of the
Eilon Hotel on November 29, 1988.20 Dov Eitan’s (un?)timely death was never solved. At his fu-
neral, the second defense attorney was attacked by someone who threw acid in his face.21
Incidentally, the ID card no longer played a significant part in the verdict that was handed down
against Demjanjuk in April 1988, whereas it had been a vital element in his extradition to Israel.
The Jerusalem Court pointed out that it had been the witnesses, first and foremost, who had proven
Demjanjuk’s guilt beyond a doubt. But the testimony of those witnesses was of far more question-
able evidential value, as Dr. Elisabeth Loftus, Jewish-American expert on eyewitness testimony,
noted; Loftus had previously all but proven the unbelievable nature of witness testimony in hun-
dreds of trials.22 Many of the witnesses against Demjanjuk contradicted not only themselves or at
17 Ibid., pp. 132, 145.
18 Cf. A. Melzer, op. cit. (note 11).
19 Cf. S. T. Possony, “The Ukrainian-Jewish Problem: Historical Retrospective”,Ukrainian Quarterly 2 (1975), pp.
141ff.
20 United Press International, Nov. 30, 1988, p. 2; cf. Annales d’Histoire Révisionniste (AHR) 6 (1988/89), p. 167.
21 United Press International, Dec. 2, 1988, p. 2; cf. AHR 6 (1988/89), p. 167; Demjanjuk’s second defense attorney
has published the entire scandal surrounding this trial: Yoram Sheftel, The Demjanjuk Affair. The Rise and Fall of
the Show Trial, Victor Gollancz, London 1994. This book is highly recommended.
22 E. Loftus, K. Ketcham, Witness for the Defense, St. Martin’s Press, New York 1991; cf. J. Cobden, JHR 11(2)
(1991), pp. 238-249 (online: vho.org/GB/Journals/JHR/11/2/Cobden238-249.html); more general: E. Loftus, K.
474
ARNULFNEUMAIER · THETREBLINKAHOLOCAUST
least their earlier statements, but also usually recounted utterly incredible, even downright gro-
tesquely unrealistic scenarios. The decisive factor for Dr. Loftus was that some of the witnesses,
due to their advanced age, could barely recall the names of their own children, or how they had only
just arrived in the courtroom, while professing to be perfectly capable of identifying John Demjan-
juk and to remember all the details of the events in the Treblinka camp or elsewhere. Even though
Dr. Loftus realized that the media hullabaloo about John Demjanjuk, about the Treblinka camp and
about the eyewitness testimony given in the past few decades rendered impartial, uninfluenced, pro-
bative testimony impossible, she refused to make her services as expert witness available to the de-
fense, since she wanted to be on Israel’s and the Jews’ side in this trial even though she was aware
that in doing so she was deliberately opposing justice and truth. Her acknowledgement of the error
she thus committed is devastating and well worth reading.
Aside from the manipulation of witnesses already mentioned, H. P. Rullmann tells of the many
and varied insults, suspicions and threats hurled at witnesses for the defense, going as far as the ar-
rests of those witnesses;23 of orders issued by the Court to ‘go easy’ on the witnesses for the prose-
cution, in other words, not to analyze or cross-examine their testimony;24 of unchecked applause
etc. by court spectators when witnesses for the prosecution made incredible and grotesque, incrimi-
nating statements;24 of the live television broadcasting of the trial in Israeli schools as well as the
worldwide broadcasting of trial highlights;25 of the interpretation of Demjanjuk’s profession of in-
nocence as stubborn denial motivated by a lack of remorse.26 The ultimate high point of the trial
was the verdict, which had been based exclusively on eyewitness testimony: it sentenced Demjan-
juk to death by hanging and prompted an almost Purim-fest-like joyful dancing in the courtroom. Of
course Demjanjuk’s defense appealed this sentence.
The public statements of Elisabeth Loftus, one of the best-known experts on eyewitness testimony
anywhere, already sufficed to discomfit the Jerusalem court responsible for Demjanjuk’s appeal,
since it had to expect that appeal proceedings would not only expose the SS ID card as fake, but
also that the witnesses would be shown up to be perjured liars, and by a Jewish expert, no less! But
by the early 1990s the case had taken on even far more interesting and, for Israel, more unpleasant
aspects. In view of the fact that Demjanjuk’s expatriation and extradition had been obtained by
fraud, by means of a faked ID card, an increasingly powerful lobby group in the United States be-
gan to speak out for the reversal of the Jerusalem verdict as well as for Demjanjuk’s return and re-
patriation to the States, since Israel was obviously not willing or able to conduct a lawful trial
against a former American citizen.
The American Member of Congress, James V. Traficant, and Patrick Buchanan, one of the best-
known American journalists, and assistant to President Reagan, numbered among the most active of
these lobbyists. As early as 1986 Buchanan had called the trial of Demjanjuk a new Dreyfus Af-
fair.27 But in early 1990 Buchanan went a considerable step farther when, regarding Demjanjuk’s
alleged mass murders in Treblinka, he wrote in The Washington Times and The New York Post:28
“The problem is: Diesel engines do not emit enough carbon monoxide to kill anybody. The Environ-
mental Protection Agency never requires emission inspections of Diesel cars or trucks. In 1988, ninety-
seven youths, trapped 400 feet underground in a D.C. tunnel, while two locomotives spewed Diesel ex-
haust into the car, emerged unharmed after forty-five minutes. Demjanjuk’s weapon of mass murder
cannot kill.”
Ketcham, The Myth of Repressed Memory,ibid., 1994; in abbreviated form: E. Loftus, “Creating False Memories”,
Scientific American, Sept. 1997, pp. 50-55.
23 H. P. Rullmann, op. cit. (note 3), pp. 23, 100, 124, 145, 191.
24 Ibid., p. 19.
25 Ibid., pp. 17, 21.
26 Ibid., p. 26.
27 The Plain Dealer (Cleveland/Ohio), Oct. 1, 1986; cf. H. P. Rullmann, op. cit. (note 3), p. 26.
28 New York Post, March 17, 1990; The Washington Times, March 19, 1990; The New Republic, Oct. 22, 1990.
475
GERMARRUDOLF (ED.) · DISSECTING THE HOLOCAUST
In 1991 Pat Buchanan was George Bush sen.’s strongest Republican rival in the primaries for the
American presidency. He did not deviate from his conviction even during these election campaigns.
On television he even supplemented his previous statements by saying that Treblinka had no doubt
been a terrible place where hundreds of thousands of Jews had been taken and where thousandshad
died – in other words, not hundreds of thousands, as was alleged!29 So Israel saw itself faced with a
powerful current in American politics and journalism which was not only close to providing the
next President of the United States but which also disputed that Treblinka had been an extermina-
tion camp.
At the same time as these developments, several eastern European émigrés groups drew up reports
in defense of John Demjanjuk, and concluded on the basis of substantial evidence that no mass
murder could have taken place in Treblinka and that even for this reason alone, John Demjanjuk
must be innocent, as must any other accused.30
Only someone who was unaware of these events could have been surprised when the Jerusalem
Appeal Court announced Demjanjuk’s acquittal in the summer of 1993.31 Demjanjuk was acquitted
for lack of precisely that so-called evidence that had resulted in his death sentence before. Strangely
enough, most of the American and all of the European media then proceeded to laud Israel as a state
truly under the rule of law – even though the administration of justice in the Demjanjuk Trial had
not measured up even remotely to any such standard. The gulf between a death sentence and an ac-
quittal is too great. But if perchance the Court had realized that it was the false statements of the
witnesses that had resulted in a miscarriage of justice, then the witnesses ought now to have been
charged. But this was not done. For a time it was even debated in Israel whether one should not per-
haps charge Demjanjuk for crimes he may have committed in the camps Sobibor and Flossenbürg,
but eventually this option was rejected.32 The iron had grown too hot for Israel, since any further
trial could have resulted in other aspects of the Holocaust being drawn into undesirably controver-
sial discussion. It is also possible that the collapse of the Soviet Union gave rise to factors – such as
easier access to archives and to the supposed sites of the crimes – which made it more advisable to
send Demjanjuk back to the United States in September 1993, acquitted, but nevertheless unlaw-
fully handcuffed during his trip home.33 In 1998, John Demjanjuk received his U.S. citizenship
back,34 only to have it revoked again in early 2002 after the OSI claimed that Demjanjuk allegedly
was a guard in the camps of Sobibor, Majdanek, and Flossenbürg.35
Will the trial of John Demjanjuk become, in a sense, the writing on the wall? Will it bring a turn-
ing point in the Treblinka Holocaust, in the ‘immolation of the Jews’ as a whole? As the Prophet
Daniel put it in Daniel 5: “mene, tekel, u-pharsin” – or, in English, ‘weighed in the balances, and
found wanting’.
2. The Camps in the Treblinka Area
In an analysis of the eyewitness testimony and accounts existing with regard to the Treblinka
group of camps, the first thing one notices is that they are completely contradictory of each other.
The witness claims diverge so widely – not only where the numbers of victims are concerned, but
also with respect to the alleged methods of killing, about the way the bodies and evidence were
29 “The Week with David Brinkley”,ABC Television, Sunday, Dec. 8, 1991.
30 T. Skowron, Amicus Curiae Brief, Polish Historical Society, PO Box 8024, Stamford, CT 06905, 1992; similar ef-
forts were undertaken by the Ukrainian Friends of Fairfield Association, ibid., which, however, is probably to some
extent identical to the Polish Historical Society. (Online: vho.org/GB/c/AmicusCuriaeDemjanjuk.html)
31 The daily press of July 30, 1993.
32 Die Welt, Aug. 2, 1993.
33 For the history of the Demjanjuk Trial, cf. J. A. Brentar, JHR 13(6) (1993), pp. 2-8; J. Sobran, JHR 13(6) (1993), pp.
9f..
34 The Plain Dealer, Cleveland, Feb. 21, 1998.
35 CNN, Feb 21, 2002; www.cnn.com/2002/LAW/02/21/demjanjuk.citizenship/; cf. AP, March 14, 2000.
476
ARNULFNEUMAIER · THETREBLINKAHOLOCAUST
eliminated, and about the location, size, form and equipment of the alleged extermination camp –
that it is impossible to cull a plausible overall account from this material.36 Udo Walendy has drawn
up a detailed study of these contradictions and inconsistencies, to which readers interested in specif-
ics are referred.37 We shall touch on only the grossest discrepancies here and will then focus on the
scenario on which the Holocaust-dogmatists have agreed after a 50-year process of evolution and
selection from among the ‘usable eyewitness testimony’, even though such a practice by the estab-
lishment historians is devoid of any scientific value due to the selectivity with which the sources are
treated.
2.1. The Malkinia Camp
Among the confused and mostly contradictory descriptions of the camp Treblinka II (i.e., B) and
the corresponding sketches of this camp,38 which were also used in the Treblinka Trials of 1950-51,
1964-65 and 1969-70,39 there is not one which clearly establishes that aside from the camp Treb-
linka I (A) and II (B), there was another camp, Malkinia, 3.7 miles north of Treblinka. This was a
transit and delousing camp approximately 740' × 820' (607,000 sq.ft.) in size, probably for Jews be-
ing deported to destinations in Byelarus and Ukraine.
In prison, more than 15 years after the fact, Kurt Franz – the main defendant in the Treblinka Trial
of 1965 – drew a sketch, from memory, of the camp where he had been employed as of November
1942.40 This sketch could perforce not be correct in every detail, considering the many years of con-
stant influencing that had gone by, but it differed entirely and not only in its external form from
Treblinka II (B) as it is shown on an official Polish layout.41 As we know today, the camp as de-
scribed by the witnesses is a mixture of conditions and elements from the camps Treblinka II and
Malkinia. A stunning confirmation of Franz’s camp sketch was found on an aerial photograph of
May 13, 1944, which is held in the National Archives.42 This camp is also the source of the terms
‘lower’ and ‘upper’ camp, as Franz had already marked on his sketch. The smaller ‘upper camp’
was separated from the ‘lower camp’ by a road. Franz was able to label the buildings in the camp
and to mark his sketch with a large number of the surnames of the personnel in Malkinia, including
his own surname, Franz, in relation to certain areas of the camp. The fact that many eyewitnesses
describethis camp casts a rather dubious light on these witness statements, as the transit camp Mal-
kinia has never been suspected of harboring an extermination center.
36 For the most important witness accounts, cf. E. Klee, W. Dreßen, V. Rieß (eds.), “Schöne Zeiten”. Judenmord aus
der Sicht der Täter und Gaffer, S. Fischer, Frankfurt/Main 1988; see also the works cited further on, as well as
World Jewish Congress (ed.), op. cit. (note 14).
37 U. Walendy, Historische Tatsachen no. 12: “Das Recht, in dem wir leben”, Verlag für Volkstum und Zeitgeschichts-
forschung, Vlotho 1982, pp. 28-35; and esp.: ibid., no. 44: “Der Fall Treblinka”, 1990.
38 Some examples: H. P. Rullmann, op. cit. (note 3), p. 151; G. Sereny, Am Abgrund, Ullstein, Frankfurt/Main 1979, p.
154; R. Glazar, Die Falle mit dem grünen Zaun, Fischer, Frankfurt/Main 1992, p. 191; A. Donat (ed.), The Death
Camp Treblinka, Holocaust Library, New York 1979, pp. 259 and 318f.; Y. Arad, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The
Operation Reinhard Death Camps, University Press, Bloomington 1987, p. 39; E. Kogon, H. Langbein, A. Rückerl
et.al. (eds.), Nationalsozialistische Massentötungen durch Giftgas, Fischer, Frankfurt/Main 1983, pp. 243f.; E.
Jäckel, P. Longerich, H. J. Schoeps (eds.), Enzyklopädie des Holocaust, v. 3, Argon, Berlin 1993, p. 1431.
39 District Court Frankfurt, Ref. 14/53 Ks 1/50; District Court Düsseldorf, Ref. 8 I Ks 2/64; ibid., Ref. 8 Ks 1/69.
40 Sketch by K. Franz, in U. Walendy, “Der Fall Treblinka”,op. cit. (note 37), p. 24; this also contains almost all the
sketches mentioned in note 38, as well as those by R. Ainsztein, Jewish Resistance in Nazi-occupied Eastern
Europe, Elek, London 1974, pp. 716ff. (p. 26).
41 Camp sketch from the brochure Vernichtungslager Treblinka, Treblinka-Museum; U. Walendy, “Der Fall Treb-
linka”,op. cit. (note 37), p. 29.
42 Ref. No. GX 72 F-933 SK, exp. 139; cf. the chapter by J. C. Ball, this volume, as well as J. C. Ball, Air Photo Evi-
dence, Ball Resource Service Ltd., Delta, BC, 1992, p. 88.
477
GERMARRUDOLF (ED.) · DISSECTING THE HOLOCAUST
2.2. The Treblinka II (B) Camp
Treblinka II has gone down in Holocaust history as an extermination camp, whereas the camp
Treblinka I, closely associated with a gravel pit, has hardly figured in subject literature at all. Since
it is beyond the scope of this study to analyze all the accounts that have been advanced with respect
to Treblinka II, and since it is only our intent to consider the necessary prerequisites and conse-
quences of the mass extermination alleged by the witnesses, we shall confine the following to the
most striking points.
In a brochure from 1943 the World Jewish Congress reported that construction of a “slaughter
house” for Jews from Poland and other European nations had begun in March 1942 in an area
12,350 acres in size.43 It is hard to imagine that even people largely lacking in gray matter could se-
riously propose a camp almost 20 square miles in size, yet this figure nevertheless found its way
into a prosecution document with the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg.44 This fact
alone suffices to reveal the producer-directors of the extermination scenario of Treblinka II in a sus-
picious light.
This author has in his possession a copy of an official-looking plan of the camp Treblinka II (cf.
illustration 1, next page), showing an archive number, two rubber stamps and a legend, but appar-
ently no date. The scale of 1:2,000 is wrong, as this would result in only half the camp dimensions
given. A camp sketch in a brochure of the Treblinka Museum shows the same shape as that on the
official-looking plan, but gives a scale of 1:4,000. All camp sketches known to date exhibit more or
less considerable deviations in detail. In terms of the points of the compass, the various maps agree
with each other but not with the air photos of expert John C. Ball.45
T. Skowron has also shed some light on the state of these camp sketches, which were drawn up on
the basis of eyewitness accounts; to date he has located more than 40 different sketches.46
2.3. The Origin of the Current Version of Treblinka
Treblinka II was situated in an area by no means particularly remote and it concealed few secrets.
The train line leading from the village of Treblinka to Siedlce ran at a distance of all of 300 meters
from the camp, parallel to the nearby road; scarcely two kilometers separated the camp from the
hamlets of Wólka Okraglik in the east and Grady and Poniatowo in the west.47 If one credits the tes-
timony of eyewitnesses, lively contacts even existed between the camp inmates and the local popu-
lace, with which a flourishing barter trade flourished.48 In fact, soon after the opening of the camp
(July 23, 1942), information from it was reaching the outer world. This was essentially coming from
Jews who had run away from Treblinka, from the populace which resided in the area surrounding
the camp, as well as from the Polish railway workers who operated the trains with the deportees. In
these reports, the following methods of killing were mentioned:
1. Exhaust gases of a motor in whose fuel “toxic substances” had been mixed (Report of the Pol-
ish underground newspaper Informacja bie(cid:298)(cid:261)ca, October 5, 194249).
2. A gas with a delayed effect, which enabled the victims to leave the gas chamber and walk to
the mass graves; there they lost consciousness and fell into the graves (Informaca Bie(cid:298)(cid:261)ca,
September 8, 1942.50
43 World Jewish Congress (ed.), Lest we forget, Spett Printing Co., New York 1943.
44 International Military Tribunal, Trial of the Major War Criminals, IMT, Nuremberg 1947, v. III, p. 567; Document
PS-3311.
45 J. C. Ball, Air Photo Evidence,op. cit. (note 42).
46 T. Skowron, op. cit. (note 30), pp. 29ff.
47 Atlas samochodowy Polski, Warsaw/Breslau 1997.
48 Testimony of Abraham Krzepicki and Samuel Willenberg, quoted in A. Donat (ed.), op. cit. (note 38), pp. 125, 192.
49 Krystyna Marczewska, W(cid:225)adyslaw Wa(cid:296)niewski, “Treblinka w (cid:286)wietle Akt Delegatury Rz(cid:261)du na Kraj”, in: Biuletyn
G(cid:225)ównej Komisji Badania Zbrodni Hitlerowskich w Polsce, vol XIX, Warsaw 1968, pp. 138ff.
50 Ibid., pp. 137ff.
478
ARNULFNEUMAIER · THETREBLINKAHOLOCAUST
3. A mobile gas chamber, which moved along the mass graves and unloaded the bodies into them
(Informacja bie(cid:298)(cid:261)ca, August 17, 1942).51
4. Shooting with machine guns (Report of the Resistance to the Polish government-in-exile in
London, March 31, 1943).52
5. Quick lime in the trains; the deportees arrived in Treblinka as corpses and were buried there
(further report of the Resistance to the Polish government-in-exile, March 31, 1943).52
6. Electric current (“Ghetto Chronicle” of Emmanuel Ringelblum, entry for October 15, 1942).53
7. Hot steam. This murder method was described in several reports and dominated propaganda
concerning Treblinka up into 1944. Of capital importance in connection with this is an unusu-
ally detailed report dating from 15 November 1942, from the resistance movement of the War-
saw Ghetto with the title Likwidacja(cid:298)ydowskiej Warszawy (Liquidation of Jewish Warsaw), in
which mass killing by means of steam is described as follows:54
“It[the death house] is a walled building. [...] It consists only of three small chambers in addition to
a boiler room. Along the North wall of this house runs a corridor from which one can enter the doors
into the chambers. The exterior wall of the chambers possesses a flap-door (until a short while ago
there was a door, which for practical reasons was replaced by a flap-door). In addition, a ramp in
the shape of a baking trough runs up to the level of the flap-door. A boiler room is directly annexed
to the building. Within the boiler room there is a large boiler for the production of water vapor and
super-heated water vapor forces its way into the chambers by means of pipes which run through the
death chambers and have the corresponding number of openings. [...] The floor in the chambers is
slippery, people slide and fall over, but cannot stand up again, since new crowds of victims who have
been violently driven inside roll on top of them, The commander [of the camp guards] flings small
children onto the heads of the women in the chambers. In this way the execution chambers are filled
to the bursting point, and then the doors are hermetically closed, and there begins slow suffocation of
the people by the water vapor, which enters through the numerous openings in the pipes. In the be-
ginning, choked-off screams break forth from inside, then gradually become weaker, and after 15
minutes the execution is finished.
Now it’s the turn of the grave-diggers. With screaming and curses the German overseers drive the
grave-diggers to work, which consists of pulling the corpses out of the execution chambers. The
grave-diggers stand by the ramp, facing the flap-door. The flaps open but no corpses fall out. Under
the influence of the steam, all of the bodies have formed a monolithic mass which is cemented to-
gether by the sweat of the murdered victims. In their death struggles, many hands, legs and trunks
have become entwined in a macabre fashion. To make it possible for the grave-diggers to pull out in-
dividual bodies, pails of cold water are poured over this mass from out of the closest well. Now one
body is separated from another and they can be easily removed. In general, the external aspect of the
bodies has not changed; only the head and buttocks have darkened to violet. The grave-diggers,
beaten and harried without respite by the Germans, put the bodies on the ramp until the chambers
have been emptied.”
According to this report, two million Jews had already been murdered in Treblinka by this method
(thus, about 17,000 per day!); it said that after the Germans had begun to also kill non-Jewish Poles
with steam, the entire population of Poland had “the spectre of death in the steam chambers” before
its mind’s eye.
This report enjoyed wide circulation. A complete English translation appeared by the year 1943 in
the omnibus volume The Black Book of Polish Jewry, and on August 8, 1943, the New York Times,
in an article headlined “2,000,000 Murders by Nazis Charged. Polish Paper in London says Jews
51 Ibid., p. 136.
52 Ibid., pp. 153ff.
53 Emmanuel Ringelblum, Kronika getta warszawskiego, edited by Artur Eisenbach, Czytelnik, Warsaw 1983, p. 416.
54 The report is completely reproduced in K. Marczewska, W. Wa(cid:296)niewski, op. cit. (note 49), pp. 139-154. A German
translation can be found in Mattogno, Graf, op. cit. (note 1), pp. 63-71.
479
GERMARRUDOLF (ED.) · DISSECTING THE HOLOCAUST
are Exterminated in Treblinka Death House,” reported that according to information from Poland,
two million Jews had been murdered in Treblinka by steam.
In 1944, the Rabbi Abraham Silberschein published an eight-page report in Geneva concerning
Treblinka, which largely adopted the claims of the resistance movement of the Warsaw Ghetto, but
which was nevertheless ambiguous with regard to the technique used to do the killing: on the one
hand, Silberschein spoke of “gas chambers” and of “gas which flows out of the pipes,” but on the
other hand, of how the corpses stuck to one another “under the influence of the steam.”.55
For the orthodox ‘Holocaust’ historians, all of this is naturally most embarrassing, and many of
them resort to shameless falsification of the historical sources. This is particularly true of the Israeli
historian Yitzhak Arad, whose book Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. The Operation Reinhard Death
Camps56 is regarded as the standard work about these three camps. Arad mentions in it the report of
November 15, 1942, but brazenly substitutes “gas chambers” for the embarrassing steam cham-
bers!57
The suppression of the steam chambers in favor of gas chambers received its impetus from a re-
port of the Jewish-Polish cabinetmaker Jankiel Wiernik, which first appeared in May 1944 in the
Polish language but was then translated into English that same year.58 Wiernik, who according to
his statements had been interned in Treblinka for a year and had escaped from there, plagiarized in
this text the report of the resistance movement of November 15, 1942, but replaced the steam
chambers with gas chambers in every instance and mentioned a motor as the instrument, without,
however, specifying that it had been a diesel motor. Evidently he believed – with good reason – that
steam as a murder method was all too unbelievable.
Why the motor? In Treblinka there was certainly an electrical plant, since the camp was not con-
nected to the local power supply. The generator of such a plant was customarily driven by a diesel
motor. Since the exhaust fumes of such machinery have an atrocious odor, Wiernik, a layman with
respect to the technical facts, obviously believed they made a suitable instrument for murder. After
the Red Army had gained control over the area around Treblinka in August 1944, a Soviet investi-
gatory commission quickly got to work and ‘determined’ that in Treblinka three million people had
been killed. However, neither steam nor gas were now named as the method of murder, but instead
suffocation by means of chambers which were vacuum-pumped:59
“The ‘bath’ was a building which consisted of 12 compartments each of which were 6 meters x 6 meters
in dimension. About 400 to 500 persons were driven into one compartment at the same time. They had
two doors which could be hermetically sealed. In the corner, between ceiling and wall, were two open-
ings connected with hoses. Behind the ‘bath’ stood a machine. It pumped the air out of the room. Peo-
ple suffocated in 6 to 10 minutes.”
The Soviet-Jewish propagandist Vassily Grossmann entered the area of the former Treblinka
camp in September 1944 and spoke with numerous witnesses who had already been questioned in
advance by the Soviet investigatory commission. In his book Die Hölle von Treblinka (The Hell of
Treblinka), which appeared in 1945, he wrote:60
“The most diverse means were employed for the killing: the exhaust fumes of a heavy Panzer [armored
tank] motor, which served the power station of Treblinka, were squeezed inside. […] The second proce-
55 Abraham Silberschein, Die Judenausrottung in Polen, Geneve 1944, Third Series, pp. 33-40. Longer excerpts in
Mattogno, Graf, op. cit. (note 1), pp. 72-77.
56 Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis 1987.
57 Ibid., p. 78.
58 A year in Treblinka, published by American Representation of the General Jewish Workers’ Union of Poland, New
York 1944. Also reproduced in A. Donat, op. cit. (note 38).
59 Akt 24, August 1944, Gosudarstvenny Arkhiv Rossiskoi Federatsii (State Archive of the Russian Federation), Mos-
cow, 7021-115-11, pp. 103ff.
60 Wassili Grossmann, “Die Hölle von Treblinka”, in: Die Vernichtungslager Majdanek und Treblinka, Stern Verlag,
Vienna 1945, pp. 49ff.
480